Rob –Thanks for your note, and thanks for your efforts to advocate for public education and JCPS.

We respectfully disagree with your assertions surrounding Eric Flack’s report. You raise a number of good questions both in the email and on your website. I’m not sure it’s productive for me to write a point-by-point rebuttal, which would be far longer than the story itself, but I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this story with you by phone or in person. In the meantime, I will address a couple of the more urgent points:

The Education Action Group was not a “source” for this story in any way. We had been working on a story on JCPS travel expenses since December, and the district had been processing a series of our open records requests since then. The EAG contacted our newsroom last week and made us aware that they were publishing a “report” on JCPS, and we realized it included some of the elements we were already working on. We got their perspective on the items we were already working on, but we did not use any of their data or their research. We also didn’t bring up any of the myriad other issues they were complaining about – administrator salaries, union contract, etc. We only talked to them about the story we already had in the works. They were not presented as objective experts – but rather as an advocacy group that was making a counterpoint to JCPS’ explanation.

EAG’s appearance on the scene did contribute to a change in our schedule, just as the OEA’s report on PRP and the upcoming State Auditor’s report did. With that much buzz surrounding JCPS expenses, we felt it was a topic we needed to address sooner rather than later.

We are well aware of the EAG’s agenda, and we spent some significant time discussing how to fairly characterize them on the air. Their own description was something along the lines of “a non-profit group dedicated to advancing free-market education solutions and school choice.” Clearly, that’s not entirely objective. However, neither is your description of them as a “right wing lobbying organization devoted to attacking public education.” We decided the important thing to make clear is that they do have an agenda, which we indicated by calling them an “advocacy group.” As to their location, I don’t see why that’s particularly relevant.

In my opinion, if you want to make it clear that a group has an agenda, you don't just say they're an advocacy group, you actually say what they're advocating for. As to my characterization of the group as a "right wing lobbying organization devoted to attacking public education," I'll admit I'm not sure if they're technically a lobbying group, but the rest, if showing my somewhat liberal bias, seems to be on target.

Kyle Olson became a warrior for education reform when he began noticing corruption in the system: unions putting the interests of adults first, teachers using their classrooms for leftist propaganda sessions and politicians being elected by special interests, only to turn around and do their bidding. He was shocked by what he learned when making his first documentary film series, "Kids Aren't Cars" When Kyle's oldest son recently came of schooling age, these issues became intensely personal for him. Kyle started Education Action Group, a Michigan-based non-profit organization, four years ago to do something about the problem. Kyle believes the nation's public education system should promote the traditional American ideals of freedom and personal liberty, instead of the progressive ideals of collectivism and centralized government. While the education establishment clamors for ever greater amounts of "investment" Kyle counters that our schools have a spending problem, not a funding problem. He also believes administrators and school employee unions must be held accountable for the miserable return taxpayers are receiving from all their so-called investments. Kyle has communicated the need for education reform by contributing regularly to BigGovernment.com, TownHall.com and makes frequent appearances on talk radio programs across the country. He has appeared numerous times on Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Fox Business Network, and National Public Radio. His and EAG's work has also been cited by the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.

If the staff at WAVE 3 reads the statement above and can't see that Kyle Olson's agenda is both far right and has a clear agenda against both public education as well as teacher unions, then I'm not sure what to say. As to the location of the EAG, it's important because this is a local story, and again, Eric Flack provided zero context or information about who the group is, where they are from, and what their expertise is in commenting about JCPS. Without this, as a viewer I don't have the proper context to understand their input on the story.

· We agree it would have been nice to compare the amount to other districts, but we ran into the same thing that we frequently do on JCPS stories – there are so many variables that you just can’t really do a true apples-to-apples comparison.

What variables are there? Certainly it shouldn't be too hard to go to Fayette County Schools or even any of the districts surrounding JCPS and ask about what conferences their teachers go to, how many teachers get to go, and what their spending was on these conferences for at least a rudimentary comparison. I agree that it may not be apples to apples, but only because JCPS is a much more diverse district in both student population and course offerings. That doesn't mean that Eric Flack couldn't have approached other districts to ask these questions and provided their responses for the viewer to have at least some context. If nothing else, knowing that Oldham County spent $X per teacher or per student versus $Y for Jefferson County would have helped.

Also, while context is critically important, so is common sense. And common sense would tell you that $1.5 million dollars is a lot of money in any context. Just because it may be a relatively small part of the overall budget doesn’t mean they don’t have to be accountable for it.

Appealing to "common sense" is a fallacious argument and means nothing when it comes to establishing context and perspective for what it truly means. If you told me that JCPS spent $1.5 million on text books this year, I might say "damn, that's a lot of money." If you told me that they spent $15 per student on textbooks this year, I might say "damn, that's it?" Is the reporter's role simply to say "wow, that's a really high number to me. Tell me why?" or should the reporter educate himself on the subject before going in so that he knows the proper questions to ask to answer the question he posed in the beginning about whether we're being taken for a ride or seeing a real benefit? It seems as though an investigative reporter should do a bit more digging so he is capable of knowing what questions to ask.

Common sense would also tell you that two free trips to Las Vegas in 3 months is a lot for anyone – particularly a public employee. Remember, professional development is required – but out-of-town professional development is not. The district does provide numerous PD opportunities at less exotic locales such as the Van Hoose Center. Teachers generally have to apply for out of town trips and be approved. We didn’t ask for a teacher who had asked for and received multiple trips, but when JCPS provided one, it would have been irresponsible not to point that out.

I agree that two trips in three months seems like it would be out of the ordinary. If I were Eric Flack, my common sense wouldn't have allowed me to leave this question with just a seemingly snarky comment that "Johnson likes professional development conferences so much, she took that trip to the Venetian to study differentiated instruction, three months after she had gone to a different professional development conference." I'd have inquired as to why she was able to go to two. Perhaps there was a legitimate reason or need for her to attend both. Perhaps there wasn't. Perhaps Flack could have asked if there were actual guidelines surrounding who goes so I could develop an informed opinion beyond "she really likes conferences."

· You raise some other excellent and interesting points that we could have included in the story – such as the process for approval, the specifics on PD requirements, and whether JCPS paid more or less than the market rate for the trips. We had some additional questions of our own we would have liked to explore. Ultimately, though, whether you’re reporting for WAVE 3 News, the New York Times, or Frontline, at some point you have to limit the scope of your story and meet a deadline. That’s what we did here, and we hope to cover some of those other issues in future stories.

Forgive me, but the scope of the story at this point seems to be "$1.5 million is a big number, and some teachers went fancy places." It's one thing to point to a deadline on a breaking story. On a supposedly investigative story, you should worry about getting some facts and substance rather than a lot of innuendo.

Speaking of other stories, you’re absolutely right about the JCPS section on our website. It hasn’t been populated in an ongoing way, and there’s no excuse for that. I have two team members working to correct that right now. However, despite what that section might have indicated, we do stories on JCPS every day, including many positive ones. Stories like:

· Our ongoing “Wear it Forward” project resulted in more than 9000 coats being collected, and greatly raised awareness of the district’s Clothing Assistance Program.

· Our story on the perception that JCPS buses have an unusual number of crashes showed that wasn’t necessarily the case. It was pretty much exactly the kind of story you wrote you’d “like to see” in a September post on your blog.

Those are just a small sample of the stories we do on a regular basis.

And thank you for them. I'm glad WAVE is taking the time to do this. But I still question why WAVE and other stations don't have education reporters. If the ever struggling CJ can appoint someone to cover it, why can't TV?

On a personal note, you should know that my wife is a JCPS teacher, and my daughter will attend a JCPS school starting next year. As a family, we have a vested interest in a strong local school system, and we are staunch advocates for both JCPS and public education. However, as a News Director, I have a responsibility to make sure that our news organization holds JCPS accountable for how it spends public dollars, and that’s what we tried to do in this case.

Bill, I thank your wife, wish your daughter the best of luck in her education, and would expect you to hold JCPS in line and hold them accountable for how they spend public dollars. But I also think that there should be a reasonable expectation that the criticisms are both valid and fair. Having a science teacher attend a convention of science teachers at a hotel is a far different animal than having a principal using JCPS money to upgrade his travel accommodations for a school trip, or a baseball coach running his business on school ground.

As I wrote earlier, I would be happy to talk with you further about this story. However, I would also welcome the opportunity to talk with you about how we can better tell all the stories surrounding JCPS, a critically important resource in our community.

Bill Shory

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and respond to my comments, Bill.

"yle started Education Action Group, a Michigan-based non-profit organization, four years ago to do something about the problem. Kyle believes the nation's public education system should promote the traditional American ideals of freedom and personal liberty, instead of the progressive ideals of collectivism and centralized government. "

This is "far right"? I am a Libertarian and adore freedom and personal liberty. Collectivism in the forms of socialism, communism and fascism have done more to ruin people than personal liberty and freedom. Sheesh!

It would be great if our schools were producing more entrepreneurs instead of government workers.